ABSTRACT
Among these self-assembled systems, the nonlamellar phases (mainly the H2 and V2 phases) are of particular interest because of the growing body of evidence for their essential role in the regulation of different biological processes such as membrane fusion, and fat digestion (Patton and
17.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 341 17.2 Lipidic Self-Assembled Nanostructures ............................................................................... 343 17.3 Dynamics of Lipidic Structural Transitions .........................................................................346 17.4 Dispersed Lipidic Particles Enveloping Nanostructures ...................................................... 349 17.5 Bicontinuous Cubic and Hexagonal Liquid Crystalline Phases as Sustained Drug
Release Vehicles ................................................................................................................... 351 17.6 Nanostructured Colloidal Lipidic Particles as Drug Nanocarriers ...................................... 353 17.7 Summary .............................................................................................................................. 355 References ...................................................................................................................................... 356
Carey 1979, Luzzati, 1997, Almsherqi et al. 2006, Teres et al. 2008, Salentinig et al. 2011, Warren et al. 2011). In a recent review, Almsherqi et al. (2006) described the structures of membrane organization observed in different cells and gave particular interest in the formation of cubic biomembranes in various cells as a result of cell stresses, starvation, or lipid and protein alterations. Figure 17.1 shows examples of two different morphologies of membrane organizations in biological cells (Almsherqi et al. 2009). However, up to date the reports on the structure-function relationship of these biological nonlamellar assemblies are still scarce. Therefore, Hyde et al. (1997) emphasized that the role of curvature in biomembrane organization morphology is the “neglected” dimension in cellular and molecular biology.
